Tweeting Cliques

Twitter has inarguably changed things. Argue until the cows come home about whether this change has been positive or destructive but please don’t waste your time refuting its impact. That would be outright silly. However, for all of its revolutionary, influential ability to change the world we live in, there are some aspects of the world that even 140 characters can’t change. Namely, social cliques.

A recent Cornell study observed 102,000 Twits and analyzed each of their 129 million tweets with varying degrees of presumably pseudo-psycho bull. After nudging their glasses and scratching their noses they reached the grand conclusion:

“Beyond demographic features such as age, sex and race, even psychological states such as ‘loneliness’ can be assortative in a social network”.

Holy. Shit. Stop. My. Press. Who’d have thought a persons loneliness would have any trace effect on their sociability. I mean, its not as if the two are almost inherently linked or anything.

But wait, it gets better. After making these revolutionary statements the study’s lead author (Johan Bollen) states that he doesn’t know why this may be the case.

The Guff is what it is: “trivial, worthless, or insolent talk or ideas.” The Guff will do what it needs to do to be what it needs to be. The Guff will show itself whenever and however it likes to and won’t be restrained to calendars of its own creation. ... Continue reading →

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